


to the wolves

by besselfcn



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, Kaer Morhen, M/M, Past Rape/Non-con, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:13:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24362614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besselfcn/pseuds/besselfcn
Summary: “You wished for a man todie?” Lambert laughs, impressed. “Because he hated your singing? Harsh punishment, that.”Geralt hears it then, behind Eskel’s grating laughter and the pleasant hum of White Gull. A stutter-seize, a heart skipping a beat of a rhythm he knows as well as his own.“Not because he hated my singing,” Jaskier bites out.
Relationships: Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Lambert, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion/Valdo Marx
Comments: 81
Kudos: 1978
Collections: Jaskier or Geralt/others (with or w/out eachother)





	to the wolves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cranksta (Vertizontally)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vertizontally/gifts).



> Apparently the kink meme has me in a tight grip with all the noncon prompts: https://witcherkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/429.html?thread=513453#cmt513453
> 
> Note that there's some implied/off-screen sex with the 3 witchers + Jaskier, but the main pairing in terms of an actual relationship is Geralt/Jaskier.

Once Eskel and Lambert have finished choking on their drinks with how hard they’re cackling over Jaskier’s… _colorful_ retelling of the first time they met Yen, Lambert kicks his feet on the table and says, “So what were your wishes then, Bard?”

Jaskier furrows his brow and downs another swallow of the well gin they’ve told him is watered-down Gull. “Sorry?”

Lambert shrugs. “You said you got out two wishes first,” he says. “But you didn’t tell us what they were.”

Geralt smirks. He never does; he’s pleased to include any of the gory details of Geralt’s exploits in that tower, but won’t extend the same punishment to himself. 

“That’s because they were inane,” Geralt chimes in. The alcohol has his tongue loose, and the company has it looser. “He wished for a man who hates his singing to drop dead and for his scorned lover to welcome him back with open arms and exposed breasts.”

Eskel inclines a glass towards Geralt. “Oh, both about you, then?”

Geralt kicks out at his chair leg under the table; the wood splinters and Eskel drops to the floor, still laughing like a self-satisfied prick. 

“You wished for a man to _die_?” Lambert laughs, impressed. “Because he hated your singing? Harsh punishment, that.”

Geralt hears it then, behind Eskel’s grating laughter and the pleasant hum of White Gull. A stutter-seize, a heart skipping a beat of a rhythm he knows as well as his own. 

“Not because he hated my singing,” Jaskier bites out, and now the other two can hear it as well. A bite of anger, covering up the rising stench of fear. 

Geralt’s heard him mention Valdo Marx before and noted the flush in his face, the clench of his hands. It had all felt like a brief, flashpan anger when he slipped it into the middle of a sentence out on the winding road, with open space around them and a day’s travel around them. 

Now, in the mess hall of Kaer Morhen, drunk and uneven and surrounded by witchers hanging off his every word, it sounds much more like something else.

“Why, then,” Eskel says, quiet. Even Lambert’s gone soft, looking between Geralt and Jaskier to ask _do you know?_ and reading, correctly, the minute shake of Geralt’s head that says _no fucking idea._

“No,” Jaskier says, shaking his head fiercely. “No, it’s not a humorous tale, my dears. Let me tell you about Posada instead. Before your dear Geralt showed up, I was getting positively booed off stage by —”

“Jaskier.”

The words stop; they’re replaced by a slow, laborious exhale. He’ll catch a world of shit from Eskel and Lambert later, about how quickly that word in that tone calmed the man. But for now it’s all he can do to stop the pounding in Jaskier’s chest from becoming overwhelmingly fast. 

“You don’t have to say,” Lambert says. His feet are off the table, now; he’s _really_ worried. “I mean, you don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to. Just, you don’t have to _not_ tell us because you think it won’t be _funny_ , you know.”

Jaskier tries to smile; he drinks instead. Downs the rest of the gin in his glass.

“Promise we’ve heard worse,” Eskel adds in. 

No one misses the way Jaskier’s eyes dart to Geralt’s face. _You might have,_ they say, _but this is different._

Geralt wishes he were wrong.

“We…” Jaskier starts, and then scrunches his face up. “Nope, no. Need another drink first, hang on. Put an actual drop of that White Gull dosh in there this time, would you, not a placebo for the fragile little human.”

Geralt grins and Lambert lets out a barking laugh; Eskel just shakes his head and obeys, tipping the tiniest drop of the Gull into a pitcher of purified water for Jaskier to have. 

He sips it and looks like he’s been _burnt_ , but he goes back for two more swallows before setting the pitcher down with a thud and wiping the back of his mouth with his hand.

“We were young,” Jaskier says. “A year out from graduation at Oxenfurt. He was always a bit of a cock, but I didn’t really _know_ him. We didn’t really… cross paths all that much, outside performance courses or anything.”

He’s intently tracing out lines and circles on the frost outside his mug. Geralt does his best not to do what Jaskier says _staring unsettlingly intensely_ , but he doesn’t know exactly how that differs from _looking_. 

“Aaand then I fucked his girlfriend,” Jaskier says, with a wince. Geralt would laugh if it weren’t for the still nauseated look on Jaskier’s face, because of _course_ the story goes like this, when _doesn’t_ it. “And in my defense, I didn’t know at the time! Not that it’d have stopped me, but, _still_. She and I were just… you know. We got on at a tavern one night. Probably to do with the fact that her boyfriend was an arse.”

Geralt hears the pace of his heart tick up again, the quick and shallow breathing in his chest. He itches to lay a cautious hand on Jaskier’s shoulder, but the look on his face and the way he’s holding himself it seems it might startle him more than comfort. 

“He,” Jaskier says, and then takes another breath, and a drink, and looks studiously at the wood grain of the table instead of the three witchers holding their breaths around him to stop from startling him. “He found out a few weeks later. Got a few friends together. They showed up at my dormitory in the middle of the night and ransacked the place, smashed my instruments, ripped up the work I’d done on my next composition. And then his friends, they. Some of them held me down, and he asked if I could take as good as I gave, and he…”

Geralt’s head swims. The heartbeat in his ears is his own now — loud, and insistent, and screaming for blood. He can feel it rolling off the others, too. Eskel’s knuckles crack from how tightly he’s made his fist; Lambert smells of a sharp hatred. 

“You don’t have to say it,” Geralt hears himself rasp. “If you don’t want to.”

Jaskier’s fingers dig into the soft wood of the table. “I’m trying to say it,” he says. “In my mind, I mean, when I think about it which is, oh, _all_ too often considering it’s been nearly twenty _years_.”

“Twenty years isn’t all that much,” Eskel says. 

Jaskier blinks like he forgot where he was, or who he was speaking to. His breathing is evener, now. His pulse is steadier. But he still shakes, his fingers gripping the mug. Something’s purged from him, left him lighter but hollowed out.

“Guess it’s a matter of perspective, isn’t it,” Jaskier says. Even his bubbled, lilting voice feels flatter.

There’s a hundred questions on Geralt’s tongue, his head spinning the way it does when he’s chasing down a contract. _Where is he now?_ _Why didn’t anyone ever stop him? Is this why you insisted I follow you to Cintra, all those years ago?_

He lets them die on his tongue. 

“Well,” Jaskier breathes. “Well. Like I said. It wasn’t very funny.”

Geralt can’t take it anymore; he reaches over and pulls Jaskier into his chest, and Jaskier positively _melts_ , going boneless and still against Geralt’s chest while the others say _thank you_ , _thank you for trusting us with that._

* * *

A week goes by in the relative quiet that comes with Kaer Morhen winters.

Then, one day, Jaskier wakes up from a post-coital nap that apparently turned into an entire post-coital eight hours’ rest, which makes sense because the _coital_ in this case was perhaps more accurately described as the most thorough fucking he’s ever been given in his _life_ considering it involved three partners with superhuman stamina and a need to serve that was positively beaten into them since the age of four. 

In any case, he wakes up. 

Geralt’s there; not in-bed there but rather getting-into-bed there. He’s pulling off gloves and armor that vaguely reek of blood and sweat.

“Geralt?” Jaskier asks, mumbled into the soft glow of a dozen candles Geralt lit on his way to bed. “What’s happened? Is everything alright?”

In the hallway, he hears the soft voices and heavy footfalls of the two other witchers making their way to their own rooms. Something that called all three of them out at night must’ve been urgent, maybe they’ve got to run—

Geralt slides into bed behind him, shed of his clothes, and wraps an arm around his waist. The candles wick out, one by one.

“It’s fine,” Geralt murmurs into his neck. “It seems Valdo Marx has dropped dead of a rather severe case of apoplexy.”

A thousand things come to Jaskier’s mind at once, a slurry of emotion.

For once, he can’t think of a single one of them to say.

“Oh,” he says, and shuts his eyes. 

“Goodnight, Jaskier,” Geralt murmurs. “Sleep well.”

He does.

**Author's Note:**

> Tell me nice things in the comments, or find me on twitter @besselfcn.


End file.
